Oculus Rift, the ambitious Virtual Reality headset being supported by the likes of John Carmack, Markus "Notch" Perrson is getting delayed into next year.
While the initial promise on its Kickstarter page was that developer kits would be sent to backers this holiday, but the company would rather they ship the best Oculus Rift dev kit possible, so in order to the new features and manufacturing duration, they've now changed the ship date to March 2013.
Speaking of manufacturing, they state that all together, preparing the factory for mass production of a product like Oculus Rift takes roughly 90 days. Add in the fact that the factory can't begin until the design and feature set has been locked down. According to Oculus, the manufacturer is already underway with the first "tooling" (T1), and it will roughly take 50-70 days. Once that's done, they'll do a pilot for a series of minor tweaks and adjustments before mass production of the device.
Also worth mentioning is that with the delay, Oculus will also be putting a larger and clearer display for the dev kit (via NeoGAF).
Ultimately, we selected a modern, 1280×800 7’’ display for the developer kit. The bright side is that the new display beats the old display in almost every key area including response time, switching time, contrast, and color quality. The improved switching time of the panel actually alleviates most of the motion blur people saw in earlier prototype demos. The downside to our new 7’’ is the weight differential: approximately 30g more than the 5.6’’
Just in case you need further proof in Oculus Rift's upcoming potential, you can check out the Kickstart video below.
Even if you're not one of the 9,000+ people who backed Oculus Rift, it's hard not to be intrigued by the possibilities it can bring on the gaming front. Needless to say, we'll be keeping an eye out for any news regarding the device and will update you on the situation.
Are you a believer in the Oculus Rift or is it just another failed attempt at Virtual Reality?
